The Grey Area
by FairyHunter
Summary: Most people know that not everything is solely good or solely bad. Only some know that nothing is. [Nominated for an Orion Award]
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

There are many problems with the way the world runs. The bad guys might come out on top. It might be impossible to tell the bad guys from the good guys; the bad guys and the good guys could even be one and the same. The bad guys always think they're right. And sometimes, just sometimes, they are right. Most people know that not everything is solely good or solely bad. Only some know that nothing is.

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The second that Butler died, my world blurred. Not just in the physical sense. Despite my tearfulness, I also felt a shift in the manner in which I deemed things either "bad" or "good." To use a clichéd metaphor, what had been unwaveringly black or white was now a churning grey (or was it gray?). Nothing seemed just plain bad or good anymore. Nothing _was_ just plain bad or good anymore.

Butler had died protecting me. He had died taking a bullet for me. So, naturally, it's all my fault that he's dead. If I hadn't been so careless, if I had only planned more thoroughly, if I had worn my bulletproof vest like he'd told me. A million ifs flitted about my head buzzing like mosquitoes. This passed as swiftly as it came, though.

_This is the way he would have wanted to die,_ I thought. He had been aging very fast, and thus getting decreasingly active; he would have retired very soon if this hadn't happened and if there was one thing Butler couldn't stand the thought of, it was retirement.

I felt guilty about Butler's death and I wished very much that it hadn't happened, but I also knew that it was going to happen eventually and this was probably the best possible time.

In that way I deduced that Butler's death, a thing which before that point in time I would put solely in the bad category, was equally good and bad. This was the first in the endless string of grey area I soon found. Shall I tell you how I ended up in the greyest of gray jail cells in the grayest of grey worlds?

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Disclaimer: I do not own Artemis Fowl. Do you?

A/N: Greetings, fellow writers!

The Orion Awards (awards for Artemis Fowl fanfiction) are truly awesome and they need support, so go check them out (links in my bio).

This fic is not going to be about Butler's death. This fic is going to be about the insights Artemis makes because of Butler's death. It is meant to completely skew the way you look at things, finding the good in bad things and the bad in good things (and the good!and!bad in good!and!bad!things).

Remember that I can only improve my writing if you give me constructive criticism!


	2. Cause

**Cause**

Once upon a time, there was a universe. In that universe, there was a world not so different from your own. Mayhap it was the same world as yours, but a few years into the future.

I was not the cause of the events which I am about to discuss. The cause was not any single person. The cause was not any single country. The blame for my eventual eternal imprisonment lies not with any one individual. To put it simply, the cause was human nature – though that may not be the best of word choice, as you shall soon see.

In this world, there were wars and robberies and murders and corrupt governments and embezzlements and pollution all the other terrible crimes of which I am either too ashamed to admit or too short on paper to list. I warned you that it was very similar to your own.

At some point, the United Nations decided to stop war. The means that they had devised to enforce it were harsh; a disabling of all technology in any country who used force upon another until they proved themselves capable of restraint. The U.N. had designed machines that could disrupt all electrical signals in a large area. These machines would be attached to satellites where they would be able to do the greatest amount of damage to one unlawful country and would also be quite inaccessible to that country.

I'm both sorry and glad to say that the threat of no technology proved highly effective.

I knew that while the intentions had been good – or had they? – the lapse in war would lead to a by and large more devastating one once someone in the world broke the rules (rules, after all, are made to be broken). Tensions between countries would grow exponentially and in the meantime people would find awful new means of punishing other people, or clever ways of disguising wars as something else. Maybe I was the only one who noticed; maybe I was the only one who cared; there certainly exists the possibility that both are true.

And yet, I couldn't help but be happy at the state of the world. Someone great had done the unthinkable and taken a large step towards a less violent planet. The lives this law would save were innumerable. Possibly, these saved lives would be ended prematurely, but at a later date; possibly, this anti-war legislation would merely reschedule their deaths. They _would_ live to see more happy days than they would have which is most certainly a good thing, until one considers that they would also live to see a greater number of sad days than they would have.

Ah, the complexities of something that was seemingly simple. I won't even begin to discuss many other impacts the absence of war might have, because you did not come here to read that. You came here for action and here it begins.

Well, my predictions were correct. The apprehension in the world mounted. No country trusted any other. Paranoia reigned freely. Old allies now had only hostility for each other. Even within countries conflicts in opinion began to appear; for example, Britain split into Britainnorth and Britainsouth.

The unspoken reasons behind Britain's division were related to the anti-war legislation. In what is now Britainnorth, factories had been built for producing weapons, claiming in whispers that they needed protection if another country went against their anti-war vow. Britain's second half had not responded well to them, possibly choosing to believe in the loyalty of the rest of the world, possibly choosing to believe that such a covertly forthright act would provoke the rest of the world into doing the same in defense.

Due to Ireland's proximity to Britain, it was simple to learn more than I should have about the event. To the outside world, the schism was over the environmental effects of these factories.

Understand that the pollution of these factories was one of the issues leading to the separation, just not the most vital one. "Vital" is a poor word here, because this pollution was said to aid in the spreading of a recently discovered influenza strain. The gaseous particles were highly liable to attach on to the coughed saliva droplets which carry the flu from one person to another, and would then stay aloft for days increasing the likelihood that another person would breathe in the droplets and thus contract the disease.

The world did not wonder about Britain's divide. Discord was too widespread for Britain's plight to be anything interesting and new. The world did, however, grow evermore suspicious of the factories. Some also believed that the flu was not the reason for the influx of deaths in Britainnorth; there were rumors of a secret war going on between the Britains. This was completely false, but in those times truth was hard to come by – hardly anyone traveled between countries because no one wanted to give the impression of spying on another country. Communication between people of two different lands rarely took place face-to-face.

Trade was one of the few ways news spread reliably. A ship's crew would see and hear things that no one else from their country did, and they would relay it back to the public through word of mouth. Though a long process, it was far better than watching the news or reading a newspaper. One was lucky to find one true fact amongst all the propaganda and invented tales. Yes, the media resorted to making things up on occasion until it got to the point where it was foolish to believe anything you heard on the news.

Another complication was the way the U.N. could not end terrorism. The definition of terrorism is tricky, for what is the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? Tracing a terrorist back to his or her country could only provide doubtful results. And then to punish an entire country for the actions of a single extremist – it would be morally wrong! Thus, the U.N. had to insist that no country retaliate against an act of terrorism. All a country could do was create better security policies, which in turn created more suspicion and distance between nations.

As you can imagine, these terrorists provoked the world. Eventually, armies around the world stood poised to attack at all times, despite the anti-war pact.

Then one day, I woke up and the third World War had begun. There was no catalyst. It just started, all of a sudden. Once one country broke the pact it seemed every other country had found it easy to follow suit. To this day no one knows which side cast the first stone, and with every country fighting for itself, sides were hard to distinguish anyhow.

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own Artemis Fowl. Do you?

A/N: Hi!

Well, I've revised this chapter based on WhiteLily's review. It is much better now. Thank you once again, Whilily! (To tell the truth, I hadn't even thought about going into more detail about how to enforce the war!ban until Lily mentioned it. 0.0)

Did I ever mention that TOD didn't happen? Well, it didn't. That's the only AU in this fic.

There will be fairies in the next chapter.

Support the Orion Awards!


	3. Heat

**Heat**

The world began heating up, in a multitude of ways. The war, of course, broke those fragile bonds between nations, releasing all of the stored potential energy in a rush.

The war heated the world in a more literal sense as well. Partly because of the less than environmentally friendly weaponry that was now being used worldwide, and the decaying bodies adding to the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, but mostly because of the decades of previous mistreatment of the atmosphere, greenhouse gases were accumulating and the temperature was creeping slowly higher.

Our war was not the cause of global warming. It was merely what sent the world over the brink of a safe heat budget. Glaciers and ice began to melt – but no one cared about a bit of water. No one cared that the fresh water now being added to the oceans was lowering the salinity, and therefore the density, of the oceans. No one realized that this lighter water would not sink where it ought; no one realized that the ocean's conveyor belt of currents would then come to a halt. Not a single human, besides myself, knew that once these currents balked, the heat would not be properly distributed and another ice age would come.

Not a single human… but all of the fairies.

Yes, they exist. Please listen: I assure you I am not mad.

They had lived underground, hidden beneath the land, they said, in an attempt to avoid conflict with humans. Mud People they called us. I wonder if the fairies intentionally used the Ku Klux Klan's derogatory name for African-Americans, or if prejudice is simply the same everywhere.

They came, partly because we were destroying ourselves, but mostly because we were destroying the planet. Their first course of action was to disarm the humans, stopping both the new source of carbon dioxide and the violence. They used superior weapons that were nonetheless non-lethal. Their powerful lasers merely stunned. After one experienced a few stuns, however, ill-side effects occurred. Extensive paralysis, and often death, naturally followed the repeated loss of sensation that their lasers induced.

Their next course of action, to remedy the global warming that was already beginning to have an effect on the worldwide climate. Simultaneously, they saved and enslaved us.

And what were we to think of the benign beings who so hostilely took over the world?

Well, there were those who exalted them: the ones who had been wishing for peace, the ones who had been wishing for a cleaner environment. There were those who hated them: the nationalists, the ones who valued freedom over safety.

And there were those who never could form an opinion about the fairies: the majority of humans, the ones who had never seen true evil or true goodness and especially not a disconcerting combination of the two.

I, of course, knew that they were both good and bad, and therefore neither. I appreciated their help, but knew they should not be allowed to conquer us so easily. Similar freedom fighters were also of this opinion, and many sought to regain humanity's reign of the planet.

But everyone knows about the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist.

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own Artemis Fowl. Do you? 

A/N: The Orion Awards love you. So go to the Orion Awards website (see my profile for links) and love them back.

This very fic was nominated in the Orion Awards for Best Speculative Fiction. I was so proud of it that I finally wrote another (rather short) chapter.

I believe there will be only one more chapter, and probably alittle epilogue.At one point, this fic was going to involve a whole array of OCs, but I've decided I'm not dedicated enough to this ficto do that (plus I can'thave dialoguein the middlea fic chock full of no!dialogue).


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